I will 100% agree with you on fitness. I’ve been in pretty good shape for the last 9 years or so but wanted to take that “next step” last year and started mtn tough. It made a noticable difference in the mountains. Thankful that I did because I ended up drawing a sheep tag in by far the most difficult unit in the state. That extra level of fitness made the difference on me killing my ram.
I agree on the rifle front too. I’ve had factory guns that shoot great and I currently have a semi custom tikka I put together for less than 3k not counting optic. It’s shooting legit 1/2 moa 5 shot groups. I wouldn’t this gun for the gunwerks of my choice. Bullets and accuracy are key.
I can tell the difference with better glass though. I’ve used the cheaper stuff and I’ve used some better stuff. The better stuff is definitely more clear and brighter. I think it’s easier to find animals with the better glass, especially at first and last light.
Yeah the expensive binos and spotters definetly have better glass but for me, in side to side real world use, it wasn’t a groundbreaking experience. Every animal we saw with the swaros, we saw with my old beater vortex binos. And it wasn’t even an issue. I’m not saying to not buy what you want, I’m just saying that in my experience over the years, the bino thing isn’t a cost effective way to improve your hunting experience.
If you have thousands of dollars to spare and you want expensive binos, buy them, enjoy them and go hunting.
Years ago when I was in college, I worked in a boutique bicycle shop, we had bikes from 300 dollars to 10 thousand dollars, it wasn’t unusual to have to go to work at 2am so we could make calls bike companies in Italy to place orders for customers.
I can remember one day, some guy walked in and basically wanted me to weigh every bike he was potentially interested in, like 15 bikes, he wanted me to switch seats and pedals and weigh them again, he wanted weights of handlebars and brake levers and all that stuff.
The guy was walking around with about 40lbs of fat on his belly and it’s like bro: I can sell you a 10k bike but you’ll be a lot faster burning off that fat and just using your current bike.
I always used to try to encourage people to not buy our bikes and to ride more, I’d often try to sell people cheaper bikes (I was a terrible salesman) but very few people listened.
Same thing at Ironman triathlons, lots of guys pedaling their 8 thousand dollars cervelo at 15mph and walking the entire marathons. The cool toys only take you so far.
One time working in that shop, there was a bike we sold for 13k to an architect (one of the ones we ordered from Italy) the bike was a colnago with a custom paint job, he had the best wheels money could buy at the time, every single piece of that bike was boutique after market stuff. All sorts of anodized bling shit all over that bike.
The due would bring the bike in to get flat tires fixed, he had that bike and couldn’t even change a tire. Onetime he brought it in for us to “inspect and clean” it, like seriously??? And we looked at his speedometer, in the prior 3 months he’d put roughly 75 miles on the bike, nose of his rides had been 5-6 miles at around 13mph. The guy was clearly terrible cyclist a low volume, low fitness guy but he had the best bike in town. He’ll, that was 20 years ago and I bet that bike would still kick ass.
